Developments

• Over the last week, Washington has captured a dictator, threatened an ally, and stayed warm with its number-one strategic rival. The one through line seems to be: American power is all that really matters to America’s place in the world. So what do alliances actually do for the U.S.—and what happened last time it tried to go without them.
• In Venezuela, oil access, prisoner releases, American products—while the democratically elected president is still in exile; in Iran, total blackout and death-penalty threats—with all 31 provinces still in the streets; and in the U.S., a federal killing on video—and only federal agents cleared to investigate.

Features

• Why are business leaders across China disappearing into prisons? Jiangnan Zhu on the motives behind Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign.
• Can Europe defend its northern border? Paul Taylor on the Nordic bulwark against Russia.

Books

• Why didn’t the U.S. stop Pyongyang from going nuclear? Joel S. Wit, Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea.

Music

• What makes a Western sound like a Western?
• & New tracks from Jake Xerxes Fussell & James Elkington, Roll Deep x Toddla T, and Robyn.

+ Weather report

• Europe under snow—Morocco, too …

Developments

Going it alone

A week ago, United States military forces captured a foreign head of state and absconded with him to New York. By Tuesday, the White House was, maybe seriously, threatening military action against Denmark—a NATO ally—over Greenland. By Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was outlining a three-phase plan for Venezuela that even Republican senators found vague, while insisting the administration would meet with Danish officials to discuss the Arctic. The U.S.-China relationship, meanwhile, remains warm: An April summit in Beijing is still on, soybean and rare-earth deals are holding, and Washington has said nothing about the ongoing crackdown on underground Christian churches there.

The Trump administration is abundant with competing voices. Rubio talks about diplomacy and governance plans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth emphasizes military-operational flexibility. But if there’s a single voice that seems most faithfully to track with the president’s own, semi-improvisational, public speech, it would have to be Stephen Miller’s—who announced this week that acquiring Greenland is now U.S. “policy” and questioned Denmark’s right to claim the territory at all. Miller’s framework is consistent: American power is sufficient to secure American interests. Alliances just constrain. If we want something, we take it or buy it.

Defenders of the postwar American establishment have pushed back fiercely—the alliance system is the foundation of American security and global order, they say, and Trump is setting it on fire. There’s of course a lot of plausibility here. But there’s also a lot of assertion—and a lot of uncertainty.

Turn on the TV, flash up the Internet, and arguments are everywhere over whether the Trump-Miller approach toward the whole non-U.S. world is wise or reckless. Neither will they likely cool off anytime soon. But they all rest on a prior question: What does the United States actually get from its alliances that it can’t get otherwise, maybe even in a better way, without them?

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Music

‘Mountain Time’

Jake Xerxes Fussell and James Elkington are two guitarists steeped in traditional folk music, here with the soundtrack for Rebuilding, a 2025 indie film directed by Max Walker-Silverman. Walker-Silverman’s work tends to sit in the emptiness of the American West—landscapes that can inspire or overwhelm. Fussell and Elkington have given him something spare and timeless, melodies that don’t overstay their welcome.

Adolfo Félix

It might seem obvious that guitars belong in Westerns—an acoustic instrument, dominant in American folk music, at home in stories set on the frontier. But why do they fit so well?